


See the World You've Brought to Life

by foggys_cupcake_girl



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Credence Barebone Gets a Hug, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Food, Good Gellert Grindelwald, Happy Credence Barebone, Happy Original Percival Graves, Holidays, M/M, Marriage, OT3, Slice of Life, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Dinner, Traditions, mild food porn, possibly too cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27730804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foggys_cupcake_girl/pseuds/foggys_cupcake_girl
Summary: Credence spends Thanksgiving Day with his husbands.It is every bit as floofy and cute as it sounds.
Relationships: Credence Barebone/Gellert Grindelwald, Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves, Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald, Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	See the World You've Brought to Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first crack at Grindelgradence, mostly to celebrate that it is now CANON that my boy Mads is Grindelwald ^_^
> 
> But. Yeah. A lil nervous about writing this 'ship so go easy on me pls <3 <3 <3

Credence’s first instinct when he wakes is to panic.

It’s funny, really, that his mind seems to forget _where_ he is, but not what _day_ it is. Of all the fears that his mother instilled in him, fear of holidays may be the saddest and most absurd one. He’s been out of her house for seven years now, married for four. But he can’t seem to shake the old feeling of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ that he wakes up with on the morning of every major holiday.

A sharp intake of breath, a full-body shiver, and before he can open his eyes a pair of strong arms has wrapped around him and pulled him against a solid chest. “’M here, you’re okay,” a low voice rumbles, heavy with sleep but still ready and willing to comfort, to protect. “Don’t be scared, Cree. ’S all right.”

Gellert, then. Gellert likes to be flippant, to shorten his name, tug his hair, sneak up behind him and tickle his ribs when the mood takes him. But he’ll also do _this,_ hold Credence as tightly as he needs until his broken pieces stick back together and he feels strong again, and right now, that’s all that matters.

Credence tries to relax, to allow Gellert’s warmth and solidity quell the wave of panic that nearly overtook him a moment ago. “It’s Thanksgiving,” he says, both an explanation and an apology.

“Mmm. Yes, yes it is.” Gellert reaches up and strokes his hair with a gentle hand. “But it’s just another day. Holidays can’t hurt you, darling. The person who did hurt you, can’t get to you now. You’re safe now, and _we_ won’t hurt you.”

He knows it’s true. Mary Lou has no idea where he is. He hasn’t spoken to her since he left home. If she knew that he was living in sin like this—married to two men (not even legally married at that), taking classes at a liberal college, working for a nonprofit that helps undocumented immigrants—she’d probably die on the spot. Or kill him. One of the two.

But she doesn’t know, and he is safe here, and the realization of it strikes him anew, the relief hitting him so hard he’d feel dizzy if he weren’t lying down. “Can we stay in bed a little while?” Credence requests in a whisper.

“Of course, little one. We can do whatever you like,” Gellert assures him, and continues to pet Credence’s hair and cradle him in those strong arms until panic is a mere memory and Credence finds himself melting back into a blissful sleep.

~

When Credence wakes again he’s alone. Not unusual; he’s a college student married to a pair of chief officers of something-or-other, he’s used to being the last one awake. He starts to get out of bed until he sees a note on the side table, in Percy’s writing, instructing him to stay there. Well, all right then.

To pass the time he turns on the TV and watches a bit of the Macy’s parade. He’s giggling over the Smurf balloon when the bedroom door opens and in strolls Percy, carrying a tray of cinnamon rolls and chocolate-stuffed pastries. Behind him is Gellert with what appears to be a pitcher of juice (which Credence would bet his life has been mixed with champagne) and three flutes.

“You guys! You didn’t have to—” Credence protests, but the words are swallowed up by Percy, who carefully sets down the baked goods before sliding into bed and smothering him with kisses. “Noooo, hold on,” Credence pushes him away, “you’re already cooking, like, a million things today, you shouldn’t have done all this too.”

Gellert sets down the glasses and the mimosa pitcher, and slides into bed so he can cuddle up to Credence’s other side. “Now see, that’s the exact argument that I used on our dear Percy here,” he informs Credence with a smirk, “but then he came back with a very good point of his own.”

“And what was that?”

“If we didn’t come in here and surprise you with breakfast, we’d be deprived of the sight of that lovely, shy little smile you give us when you’re really pleased but don’t want to admit you like that we’re spoiling you again.” Credence blushes a little and casts his eyes down, and Gellert chuckles and cups a hand around his chin, forcing him to look back up. He brushes his lips against the temple of Credence’s head as he murmurs, “There, that look. You were right, Percy. Well worth it.”

~

After a lazy breakfast in bed with plenty of snuggles and kisses between bites of cinnamon rolls and pastries, the three of them eventually make their way to the living room. The whole apartment smells of turkey and cinnamon and cranberries. Credence lights a fire and puts on _The Nutcracker Suite,_ settles in at the kitchen island with a tray of devilled egg halves and a pastry bag of egg filling. This is good, he thinks. This is home.

“You don’t have to do that, you know. I can manage it just fine, if you want to go watch the game,” Percy says as he peels and cubes potatoes like a machine.

Credence giggles and shakes his head. “Percy, you know that never once in my life have I ever given half a damn about a football game. You just want to think you don’t need any help.”

“Which you do,” Gellert points out as he snags a filled egg from the tray, “if we want to eat sometime before midnight.”

Percy glares at him. “I’m sorry, who was it who replaced the egg noodles with soba noodles when I wasn’t looking? Like _that_ didn’t hold us up?”

Gellert shrugs and steals a piece of celery. “What, you couldn’t have seen that before they were cooked?” he points out, his mouth full. “Some great chef you are, missing such an easy detail.”

Percy stands there, hands on his hips, and glares at Gellert. Credence sees his apron, a cute little thing with Winnie the Pooh silk-screened on the front and embroidered with the words _cuddle the cook,_ and can’t suppress a giggle. “All right, that’s it,” Percy decides. “Both of you, out.”

Credence thinks fast. Like it or not Percy _can’t_ cook all this food himself, but he won’t admit it and if Credence tries to leave and sneak back in, it’ll just make him more annoyed. So he decides he has no choice but to play dirty: he looks at Percy through big, innocent eyes, lets his lower lip puff out and tremble just a bit, and says in the softest, most pleading tone he can manage, “Please, can’t I stay? I’ll be good, I promise.”

Percy takes one look at him and melts. “All right, sweetheart. You can finish the eggs, and _only_ if you feel up to it I’ll let you help with the cookies, is that okay?” He narrows his eyes at Gellert. “You, though— _out.”_

Credence shoots him a grateful smile and resumes filling the eggs. Gellert waits until Percy has buried himself in the fridge searching for the onions to lean down and whisper, “You little cheat.”

Credence swallows another giggle, knowing his puppy eyes have never worked on Gellert but _always_ work on Percy. “I’m sorry,” he whispers back. “I can’t hear you over the sound of _me not getting banned from the kitchen.”_

Gellert pouts and slinks back over to the living room, and Credence swears he didn’t know it was possible to passive-aggressively watch a football game until this very moment.

~

Sometimes Credence still can’t believe this is really his life.

He looks at the spread of food across the dining room table and his stomach flutters with anticipation. There’s the usual turkey and stuffing and gravy, yes, but Percy has added both dishes from his homeland and from Gellert’s as well: Irish colcannon, or creamy mashed potatoes mixed with buttery cabbage leaves; spicy German molasses cookies called _pfeffernusse;_ thick slices of Irish soda bread and fruit bread from Germany called _Stollen;_ buttered Dutch egg noodles; decadent fudge-covered cheesecake made with Bailey’s. 

It all looks and smells amazing, yes, but what puts tears in Credence’s eyes is this: in the midst of all of it is his favorite butterscotch pie, which is certainly not part of a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, but he knows that Percy included it because Credence loves it. His corny little modern dessert made with butterscotch chips and a Nilla Wafer crust is treated with the same level of reverence as the traditional dishes from his husbands’ respective homelands and it nearly brings him to his knees.

Gellert has just come up behind him with a tureen of gravy, but when he sees Credence standing there frozen with tears in his eyes he quickly puts down the dish and pulls Credence in for a hug. “Everything okay?” he asks gently, one hand gently stroking up and down his back.

Everything is okay. Everything is _wonderful._ Credence throws both arms around Gellert’s waist and holds him close. “I don’t deserve you. Either of you,” he says.

“Oh, Cree…yes, my love. Yes you do.” Gellert gives him a quick, comforting squeeze and drops a kiss on the crown of his head before he draws back and holds Credence at arm’s length so he can look into his eyes. “You deserve all the good things, and we’re going to keep giving them to you, for as long as it takes for you to understand.”

“Understand what?” Percy asks, coming in from the kitchen with two bottles of wine, and then as he sees Credence drying his eyes, “Shit, Credence, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a little emotional. It’s okay.” He reaches up and squeezes Gellert’s hands, a silent acknowledgement that it’s okay for Gellert to let him go. “It’s silly. I just…I saw that you made that pie, and…”

“Oh…well, yeah?” Percy looks taken aback. “Of course. It’s your favorite, why wouldn’t I make it?”

And. Yeah. _That._ Credence doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that: to the idea that his favorites, or even his most basic needs, are something to be taken into account when making decisions.

He doesn’t cry again, but when they join hands to give thanks before digging into their meal, he squeezes his husbands’ hands extra tight.

~

They go out for a walk around the neighborhood after the meal, bundled up in scarves and thick wool jackets and, of course, the requisite masks. They don’t take long, just one quick loop around the block to enjoy fresh air and then back to the safety of their home. But Credence still loves it, every minute of it, because the leaves are still colorful even if there aren’t many left on the trees, and the air is crisp but not _too_ cold, and even though he can smell his own turkey-breath through the mask and he misses being able to pull one of his partners in for a kiss, he still gets to hold their hands as they wander the neighborhood and that’s good enough.

(It’s enough, because it’s still a vaguely possessive gesture, and it still blows his mind sometimes that they _want everyone to know they chose him._ That they are _proud_ of him, _proud_ to call him theirs, that they don’t want to hide him in the back courtyard of a church or shove him in the attic when they have visitors, they _want people to know he belongs to them.)_

At home, Credence and Gellert join forces to banish Percy from the kitchen, forcing him to relax on the couch with a mug of Irish coffee while they clean up the mess from dinner. “You don’t know how to load the dishwasher,” he protests from the couch even as they successfully manage to fit most of the dishes inside said dishwasher.

“We’re just fine winging it over here, darling,” Gellert assures him. “Look, we’re almost done already.”

“But there’s a diagram in the cabinet—”

“Percival Graves. If you don’t calm down and drink your coffee and let us clean the kitchen, I am going to go into your drawer in the bathroom and replace the rubber snake I left there earlier with a real one. You just see if I don’t!”

Percy reluctantly lapses into silence, while Credence tries to muffle his giggles in a dish towel, fails miserably, and is rewarded with a playful swat to the ass from Gellert. He lets out an involuntary squeak and before he can say it’s okay, he didn’t mind, he just wasn’t expecting it, Gellert quickly atones for the slap by pulling him in for a messy, delightful, molasses-and-spice-flavored kiss.

~

“All right! Are we ready?” Gellert puts one hand on the lid of the chest that holds the extra blankets. “Are we _all_ ready?”

“Yes!” Credence and Percy chorus from the couch, and Credence smiles when he feels Percy practically vibrating beside him. 

With a grin and a dramatic flourish, Gellert whips the lid off the chest and withdraws three blankets, one red, one silver and one tan, all of them emblazoned with the words _This Is My Hallmark Christmas Movie Watching Blanket._ Percy actually lets out a childish little cry of excitement as Gellert fans out the red one and drapes it across his lap. Credence just smiles and offers up a quiet _thank-you_ when Gellert lays his thick, plush blanket across his lap.

One of the traditions that began when Credence married into the family was to watch the first Christmas movies of the year on Thanksgiving. They quickly discovered that he shared Percy’s affinity for terrible Christmas rom-coms, the worse and more cheesy the better, and since Gellert enjoyed making fun of them so much, well…it just became a _thing_ with them, a silly thing, yes, but _their thing._ Naturally, Credence loves it.

They settle in and put on their mutual favorite: _Snow Globe,_ a bizarre TV movie about a young woman who learns to escape to a tiny village inside a magical snow globe to get away from her loud, annoying New York family. They all know it by heart, which of course just makes it that much easier to riff the whole thing _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ -style.

Darkness has fallen outside. The fire that Credence built early this morning has been kept up all day and is still blazing merrily in the fireplace. He’s snuggled up on the couch with Percy on one side and Gellert on the other, and he feels so warm and safe and _loved_ he thinks he may well burst.

They watch and laugh at the movie, drinking their cups of hot chocolate flavored with either Bailey’s or peppermint vodka depending on personal taste, and it doesn’t take long for Credence to begin to float, to feel reality going soft and hazy around the edges. He rouses himself one more time when Gellert pauses the movie to get snacks, but after a turkey sandwich and a piece of that delicious butterscotch pie—and one more mug of boozy peppermint hot chocolate—he’s done for.

He puts aside his plate and snuggles back under the soft blanket. He lets his head rest on Percy’s shoulder, lets his eyelids grow heavy. A soft moan escapes him as he feels Gellert’s hand massaging his back, a gentle but firm pressure right between his shoulder blades.

Sleep claims him more quickly than he expects it to. The next thing he’s aware of is a pair of strong arms lifting him bridal-style off the couch, still wrapped in his Hallmark movie blanket. Gellert, of course. Carrying him to bed like a child who fell asleep waiting for Santa to come. Credence would complain, because he is _not_ a child, he is a grown man of twenty-five thank you very much, but he feels so heavy, so tired, maybe it’s all right, just this once…

He feels himself laid out on the bed, feels strong, certain hands undressing him. He burrows down under the blankets like a bunny, the sheets feel so soft and so good, and he’s so sleepy…

“JESUS FUCKING _CHRIST! GELLERT!_ WHAT THE ACTUAL _FUCK?”_

Credence claws himself up from the underworld and turns over, just in time to see an irate Percy storming out of the bathroom, his expression murderous. His eyes are still blurred from sleep so it takes him a second to realize why Percy is so angry: in one hand, the man holds a toothbrush. In the other?

A rubber snake.

Credence would say something, would try to smooth Percy’s ruffled feathers before a midnight prank war breaks out, but he’s too busy laughing so hard tears soak the pillow beneath his cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> Like Fantastic Beasts? Like Gradence, Colin Farrell, or Mads Mikkelsen? Hit me up on Twitter @CupcakeFoggy, I love making new Fandom Friends :D


End file.
